The biggest consulting firms in the world aren’t winging it. They’ve built proprietary maturity assessments that anchor their sales conversations, shape their delivery, and keep clients coming back for more. And they don’t just use them once, these tools become the thread that runs through multi-year engagements.

In this chapter, I pull back the curtain on the likes of McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, and Accenture. You’ll see the different ways they approach the same core challenge: diagnosing where a client is, showing them where they could be, and making the gap too compelling to ignore. Some lean heavily on data visualisation. Others on deep benchmarking across industries. All of them use these assessments as a trust accelerator, a way to move the conversation from “why should we work with you?” to “when can we start?”

I’ll break down real examples, what works, what doesn’t, and how these giants weave AI into their models to sharpen insight and speed up delivery. And more importantly, I’ll show you how to adapt these strategies to your own practice, whether you’re a boutique advisory or a mid-size firm with big ambitions.

By the end, you’ll have a playbook of proven approaches from the best in the business and the confidence to make them your own.

Next up: Chapter 6, real-world AI case studies. We’ll go behind the scenes of successful AI-enhanced processes, how they are designed, deployed, and delivered tangible results you can measure in millions.